Don’t miss this one.
A Dem Congressman tore into The Washington Post editorial page on the House floor today, placing the blame squarely on the paper for helping land America in the Iraq mess.
House Dems passed the Iraq withdrawal bill today by a hair, 218-212. A list of Dems who voted against it and Republicans who backed it is here.
Following the US Attorney Purge story. Here’s more clear evidence that Kyle Sampson, former Chief of Staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, knowingly lied to congressional staff and that the DOJ document dump did not include key emails directly relevant to the investigation.
Like Atrios, I’m a bit mystified by Michael Kinsley’s apparently determined obtuseness about the US Attorney Purge. All the more so since of all people Kinsley was probably the guy who inspired me to get into the opinion journalism business in the first place.
It’s all worth a run-down, a refresher on where we are in this whole sordid mess.
First, is this about firings? Kinsley is still mulling over whether this is comparable to Bill Clinton’s entirely normal dismissal of US Attorneys when he came into office. Would it be as big a deal if the Bush White House had fired all the US Attorneys at the start of the second term, as folks at the White House first seemed to have considered?
The firings were not the offense. They were the clue that suggested the offense. As the Congressional Research Service has shown, over the last twenty-five years only ten US Attorneys have been dismissed other than at the beginning of a new president’s term of office. And of those eight were for clear cause. For instance, one of them bit a stripper on the arm in a night club. And that, not surprisingly, led to his ouster.
To quote the CRS report …
In virtually all of those 10 previous cases, serious issues of personal or professional conduct appeared to be the driving issue. Prior to December, for example, only two U.S. Attorneys were outright fired for improper, and in one case criminal, behavior. The CRS report identifies six other U.S. Attorneys who resigned during the 25-year period who were implicated in news reports of âquestionable conduct.â For two others, the CRS was unable to determine the cause.
(For more details on this key element of the firings story, see this discussion by Scott Lilly.)
In any case, ten times over twenty five years and in eight of those cases for clear and publicly aired reasons.
And then on one day, secretly and with no explanation, seven get canned. And several are involved in corruption investigations targetting Republicans. The first public explanation is that they were fired for poor performance. But then it turns most were among the highest performing US Attorneys in the country. Add in the fact that one of the eight was overseeing one of the broadest ranging and historic public corruption cases in US history and … well, it all got our attention.
Then, only a little digging revealed clear evidence that two of the US Attorneys were dismissed for not pursuing bogus claims of Democratic ‘voter fraud’.
Now, Kinsley seems to have bought in to David Brooks artfully laddled line that some of the firings seem to have been for partisan political reasons (bad) while others were for policy political reasons (not necessarily bad). But with all due respect, like history repeating itself, it only looks that way to those who don’t know the details.
One point not many have yet noticed is that the Justice Department actually singled-out David Iglesias for his expertise on voter fraud issues and selected him to train other US Attorneys on voter fraud issues — so great was their confidence in his grasp of the issue and his approach to it on the policy level. The only reason he got canned was because he didn’t indict specific Democrats who Republican operatives and officeholders wanted indicted.
With Carol Lam, looking closely even at the emails the White House has allowed the Justice Department to release and it’s clear that most of the Justice Department’s dealings with Lam were coordinating with her on defending the policies she was pursuing against outside criticism. Given that this is being proferred as the after-the-fact excuse for her firing it is surpassingly curious that there appears not to be a single email showing anybody at the Justice Department or the White House asking her to change anything she was doing. The emails that show DOJ and White House officials brainstorming after the fact to come up with reasons for why they fired different prosecutors.
It’s not that Lam was fired for not following administration policies on immigration. It’s simply the one instance where the Attorney General and the White House are trying hardest to make that case. And it’s just not convincing.
There are many people in this conversation trying to avoid the issues, confuse the issues or just ignore them. And more than a few people are just plain confused. But it’s not that complicated. Administration officials have repeatedly and demonstrably lied about the firings. And there is now abundant evidence of a pattern of using the president’s power to hire and fire US Attorneys to stymie public corruption investigations of Republicans and use the Justice Department to harass Democrats by mounting investigations of demonstrably bogus ‘voter fraud’ claims. It’s really that simple.
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Late Update: And as long as we’re talkin’ muck, we hear there’s another DOJ document dump coming this afternoon.
The US Attorney Purge is part of a bigger Rove-backed program of pushing bogus ‘voter fraud’ claims to keep Democrats away from the polls. McClatchy’s got a good overview.
Liberal House Dems get a standing ovation from members for helping swing passage of the Iraq withdrawal bill today.
As Atrios might say, I think this might be that ‘Bye Alberto’ moment. From the AP …
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales approved plans to fire several U.S. attorneys in a November meeting, according to documents released Friday that contradict earlier claims that he was not closely involved in the dismissals.
Also worth noting, these new and very daming emails are from the ‘gap‘.
Late Update: And of course, just an oversight. From the NYT …
Department officials said there had not been an intentional effort to delay the release of the new material. Instead, they said, the e-mail messages were overlooked in past searches of office files and computers. Many, they said, were copies of e-mail that had already been disclosed. The latest batch of documents shows just how completely the department misjudged what the reaction would be to the dismissals.